CrossOver – 2 Artists, 6 degrees of Separation is a collaboration between Reddy Lieb and Jennifer Ewing. Each artist has cross-pollinated each other’s approach to express the ways we all are connected. Their art is designed around a continuum of lines that are the underlying energies that hold all things together in a common space.

Through their exploration of painting, sculpture, and mixed media pieces, all created and inspired by recycled materials (mirrors, paper, plastic and string)they are crossing over any boundaries of separation to express the greater whole.

The artists have collaborated recently on Currents, a 2015 exhibition at the China Brotsky  Gallery in the SF Presidio using repurposed materials to inspire their work. They meet regularly to critique their work and share new concepts for exploration. Both artists are passionate about reusing found materials in their art and in their concerns for the health of the planet.

Reddy Lieb has created a wall of paintings and mixed media pieces that includes both abstract and realistic imagery, old and new, opposite forces that coalesce into a whole. Everything is connected…even seemingly random and unrelated materials, or concerns.

Jennifer Ewing continues her work with the symbol of the Spirit Boat as a metaphor for passage. In this exhibit she has created a large ship that pulls along a trail of plastic debris that references our tragic and growing Sea of Plastic. Her smaller sculptures are inspired by Christo’s technique of wrapping subjects and are made using light fixtures that become mysterious yet familiar feeling objects.

Reddy Lieb

“Art is a form of nourishment (of consciousness, the spirit), ” – Susan Sontag

This is how I describe my passion for art and the ideas that I explore through mixed media. Artists have transformed found materials into “art” for as long as there have been artists. I have been using recycled materials in my work for over 35 years. In 2000, I was awarded an artists residency at Recology, where I put together a portfolio of work based on my exploration of the mythical character Demeter, and her dilemma in the 20th century. After completing this residency, in 2002, I went back to graduate school at CCAC, when I experienced the collapse of American idealism after 9/11. Working with broken glass, burnt wood and grown grass I built installations. My final installation was creating a glass tower of cards that referenced the myth of King Minos and the collapse of the kingdom on the isle of Crete.

Sites of transformation have always interested me. They are mysterious spaces, a fertile void, ripe for renewal. I created work based on demolition sites and the Phoenix rising.

Now, in the midst of major social, political and economic upheaval, I am exploring the illusion of security.  What we need in this time is to know how we are all connected, like mycelium of mushrooms that forms an immense underground communication network. Referencing sacred geometry and ideas from the string theory I am creating connections.

“The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.”  – George Sand

Jennifer Ewing

A life long artist, Jennifer has worked as a teaching artist, an illustrator, muralist, entrepreneur and workshop facilitator.

Her major theme of “Spirit Boats” began in 2005 as a response to the death of her father and is dedicated in his honor. Her boats become symbols of transformation that are created as sculpture, paintings, drawings, prints and installations that reference one’s movement through life.

In her personal work and workshops, Jennifer uses recycled materials with an emphasis on plastic and paper. She is inspired by the universality of Spirit Boats and demonstrates how little boats can be made of cut-apart plastic water bottles or stained papers. She is also influenced by how the artist, Christo, has wrapped objects that has given her new ideas on how to treat recycled lights that have become sculptures.

Jennifer has lived and worked in an historic SF Mission District artist community, Developing Artists, since 1986. She has exhibited her work widely in various Bay Area venues over the past twenty years with solo shows including: Kimball Gallery, deYoung Museum, Living Shaman Museum of the SF Presidio, Gallery 190, UCSF Memory & Aging Center, and Ruth’s Table. She is a senior teaching artist at the SF Fine Arts Museum and a museum educator at the Contemporary Jewish Museum where she works with adult and children’s programs, designs projects and leads tours of exhibitions.

Since 1989 she has ran her mural business, Ewing and Germano, with husband, Leo Germano that specializes in fine arts services for commercial and residential clients.

In 2012, she launched two additional businesses for organizational learning: How to Navigate Change for Team Building and Making Your Mark Now, offering drawing programs in partnership with Leo Germano. As an artist and entrepreneur, she is a bridge to help people incorporate art and right brain thinking into their daily lives.

This exhibition is on view through the 13th of July, 2018.